


His Fellow Men

by vuokki



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Gen, Kid Sherlock, Kidlock, Light Angst, Loneliness, Music, Rain, Short, Teen Mycroft, Violins, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Young Mycroft, Young Sherlock, attic, mansion, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vuokki/pseuds/vuokki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine-year-old Sherlock explores the Holmes mansion's attic to stave off boredom on a rainy day. What he finds there is unexpected and wonderful.</p><p>Rated teen and up for brief mention of alcohol abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Fellow Men

_Click_.

  
Sherlock slipped the bent paperclip back into his pocket and twisted the ornate doorknob. A swath of grey light poured into the stale stairwell for what must have been the first time in years. The irritated groan of the door didn't faze him. No one could hear him up here.

  
The house had been intensely boring lately. Mycroft had returned from boarding school for Christmas break but withdrew to his room to read most of the time now, and seemed more annoyed than eager at the prospect of playing with Sherlock. Mummy was away again on one of her holidays. She was rarely ever home. The sourfaced housekeeper, Mrs. Mason, was hardly worth thinking of. She smoked outside a lot and didn't try very hard at cleaning unless Mummy was around.

  
Silence gnawed at Sherlock's eardrums, eased only by an occasional moan of thunder.

  
Closing the attic door behind him, he surveyed the room curiously. The cold floor stretched out long and narrow, velvet with dust and lit by a single window at the end. A jumble of trunks and boxes were stacked carelessly near him, some on their sides or upside down like dead turtles. A veil of virgin dust clung to these too. Places, inanimate objects, little details spoke to Sherlock in ways that ordinary people never seemed to hear. This place had only one thing to say. _I am alone_.

  
Sherlock sank to his knees in front of the nearest one, prying up the lid with his fingers. Old linens. Boring. On to the next one, and the next. Moth-eaten coats, baby clothes - not belonging to anyone still living, he imagined. One box revealed a trio of haphazardly posed dolls that pursed painted lips at him. Sherlock was about to kick a trunk with frustration. In the last one, shoved far back into the corner and strewn with long abandoned cobwebs, something finally caught his interest.

  
The warm hue of old wood gleamed in the pewter light. Eagerly the boy lifted a violin from the trunk, and a little rummaging at the bottom turned up the bow. He'd seen the instrument in books, of course, but had never been given one to handle. The Holmeses weren't known for musical talent.

  
Sherlock's socks snagged on the floorboards as he darted to the window to examine the violin better. Obviously it hadn't been used in decades, but he was sure he could make it sound like its old self again with practice. Reverently he stroked the polished wood, committing its texture and curves to memory. Tucking the piece under his chin, Sherlock clumsily drew the bow over the strings. Squeals of protest rang out, startlingly loud, even after repeated attempts to coax them to sing by tilting the bow this way and that.

  
Next Sherlock tried tweaking the tuning pegs. The strings whined a little less obnoxiously once tightened, but the sound was far from any violin music Sherlock had heard on the radio. A challenge, then.

  
Excited now, Sherlock propped the violin against the windowpane and almost stumbled headlong as he skidded down to his room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few weeks passed, and Sherlock spent hours every day up in the attic in his pyjamas learning to play the violin. He began mornings by sneaking up the stairs first thing, until Mycroft missed him at one too many breakfasts and put his foot down, insisting he eat something first before secluding himself at the top of the house.

  
The drafty attic atmosphere bothered Sherlock not a bit. No family photos smirked from mantels, no chairs lurked for Mummy to sit in, no Mycroft was near to shush him. This was Sherlock's private domain, and the rain alone applauded him.

  
The study of a few volumes borrowed from the library downstairs helped Sherlock understand the historical and technical aspects of the violin, as well as how to read notes. Mycroft had finally been nagged into going into town for rosin and new strings. He'd shaken his head at Sherlock at first.

  
"You need a proper tutor if you really intend to learn such a complex instrument," he'd told Sherlock with an arched eyebrow. "Don't expect to be the world's next Mozart by the New Year from playing on your own."

  
Sherlock's response was to trail after Mycroft through the house for a good half hour, violin screeching like a dying animal in his wake, until the older brother buried his face in his hands and went to fetch his wallet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boy in the attic hardly noticed the passage of the old year into the next, until one afternoon Mycroft dared to intrude.

  
The silhouette at the window had ceased to play as soon as he'd detected his brother's tread on the stair.

  
"Go away, Mycroft!"

  
The door swung open anyway.

  
"School starts tomorrow," the older brother announced, ignoring Sherlock's rudeness. "If you can tear yourself away from your tunes, be up and dressed on time in the morning so Mrs. Mason can drive you."

  
"Been at the biscuits again, I see."

  
Mycroft glared down at his own shirtfront, dismissed a few crumbs with a sweep of his hand and snapped the door shut.

  
Sherlock only took up the violin again when the sound of Mycroft's steps receded below the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sherlock's time with the violin was now limited to afternoons. Making the bow dance over the strings was the highlight of his every day. He astonished his teachers by completing his homework during classes, so he would have more free time at the house. When dinner was over he retreated to his room to listen to classical music records nicked from Mycroft's room, and often fell asleep to the sound of violin strings soaring in his ears.

  
To Sherlock Holmes, even at a mere nine years old, answers to problems came easily, like stray cats to the scent of food. The violin was proving to be more a more complicated puzzle than he'd first thought, but that just made it more _interesting_.

  
By early spring he had the instrument sounding halfway presentable. It had taken Sherlock weeks to work out the proper notes on his own, shifting his fingers gradually along the strings as he stroked them with the bow, stopping occasionally to twiddle with the tuning pegs. Now he could eke out "God Save the Queen" by ear, though an untamed squawkiness still had an underlying presence in the melody.

  
Muscle memory had begun its takeover, and Sherlock found himself having to consciously think about how to play less and less, and turn his mind more towards manipulating the flow of sound. Composing new combinations of notes was infinitely fascinating to him.

  
Sherlock's mind, forever racing along at top speed and shooting off in unpredictable directions, ran hand in hand with the music now. Sometimes he would close his eyes to the sunlight filtering through the grimy glass and lose himself in the glory of the sounds he was creating. When he opened his eyes again, pinprick stars blinked back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mummy returned from holiday at the beginning of summer, and in a show of motherly affection - or what passed for it in the Holmes household, anyway - she insisted Sherlock and Mycroft eat dinner with her every night. Some effort was made on her part to be agreeable, but after a few glasses of wine she'd lose her composure.

  
Mummy didn't give much detail about where she'd been but Sherlock was pretty sure he knew what was up. She'd gone off with yet another man, who either ended up being an intellectual superior to her or eventually made her feel guilty about leaving her children alone. She'd go through cycles of leaving home abruptly and indefinitely, becoming bored of whatever man had wooed her into traveling with him, and returning with an attitude of regret and desiring to make up for her absence. Mummy was hopelessly ordinary, and predictable.

  
One night Mycroft suggested Sherlock play his violin for Mummy. Sherlock instantly disliked the idea. He'd never even taken the violin down from the attic. He didn't play for others' enjoyment.

  
"No."

  
This earned him a glazed glare from Mummy. Sherlock squirmed. He knew he had two options: continue to be difficult, and risk having the violin taken away, or play for a few minutes and retreat to the attic with it again after dinner.

  
"I'll go fetch it, then..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first notes of "God Save the Queen" filled the room. Sherlock closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see Mummy smirking at him over her wine glass. Her skin was tanned; probably she'd been in Greece again. Her lipstick was smeared on the glass. It was the last of the Bordeaux.

  
"Sherlock, are you _really_ trying to play or are you just making a racket? Mycroft, who on earth's been tutoring him?"

  
"He's learnt on his own," Mycroft muttered, pointedly avoiding meeting Sherlock's eyes, which were slowly filling up with tears even as he continued the song.

  
"Well, small wonder!" Hiccup. "I think I've got a headache now..."

  
Sherlock finished the tune even though he knew nobody was really paying attention at this point. He wasn't playing for them. Never had, and never would. Mycroft applauded, briefly and politely.

  
"I'm not hungry anymore,'' Sherlock announced, forcing his voice not to tremble. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed."

  
Without waiting for an answer he spun on his heel and walked from the room with as much calm as he could muster. Once he passed into the next room, he ran.

  
On the way up to the attic Sherlock stopped at his room to lock the door from the inside and pull it shut. If anyone dared to knock, they'd give up on the door opening after a few minutes of silence and move on. He could pick the lock later to go to bed.

  
Up in the attic the dark swallowed him whole, comforting after the sting of electric light in the dining room. Rain had begun to whisper on the roof, muttering like so many concert-goers before the performance. Resisting the urge to sob, Sherlock pressed his forehead against the water-cool glass, regulating his breathing to sift a sense of calm over his psyche. Stupid people, toxic people, trying to leach into his mind and slowly poison him. Sherlock had an antidote, now.

  
A soap sliver moon barely reflected enough light to see by. Didn't matter, the boy had mapped out every curve and string of the violin by touch alone.

  
Sherlock deftly lifted the violin into position. The song he played had never been heard before, had never been written down. Untamed, alone and unique, the music echoed the musician.

  
Squeezing his eyes shut against the itching of his drying tears, Sherlock forgot, for a little while, the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of his fellow men.

**Author's Note:**

> “There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellow men.”  
> ― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Five Orange Pips 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this one! This is my first published fic and I want criticism, so don't be shy to leave comments. I tried to make the wording feel as "English" as possible - however, if any native English folk notice irregularities or words that ought to be substituted for others, please let me know. Thanks!
> 
> I rather modeled Mummy on Sylvia from "Parade's End" - I've always imagined her as some flighty, shallow thing that doesn't really understand her children and is made uncomfortable by their intelligence and eccentricities.


End file.
